Every Department, Bureau, Board, and/or Commission of the Federal government has impacts upon or regulates industries which impact upon the increasingly volatile planetary climate. Everything from Defense (especially), to Treasury (through tax policy, etc), to Justice (enforcement)We are out of time. We can not only see the abyss, we teeter right on the brink. I have mentioned Van Jones, before. He's a young, sharp, Harvard Law grad and community organizer who has a GREAT IDEA: "The Green-Collar Economy." Followed to its logical conclusion, Jones' proposals would address virtually ALL the pressing issues involved with a sustainable economy AND a sustainable planet.
Every heated or cooled building should be inspected to evaluate its energy efficiency, conservation-and/or-wastage. Then every heated/cooled building found wanting in any of those areas should be either retrofitted to improve their performance, or torn down and rebuilt within the energy-saving demands of a dying planet. Federal funds should be devoted to the invention, production, and promulgation of energy-saving technologies.
There is absolutely NO practical (versus ideological/commercial) reason that there should not or could not be SOME kind of solar-energy collector on the roof of EVERY building in America (or the world, for that matter). And there would be NO better use of Federal resources than that (except perhaps for Universal Health Care) for the federal government to subsidize 100% of all such innovation and renovation, as it did when developing nuclear energy.
There is an additional benefit: Jobs. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of jobs, developing, building, installing, servicing, and repairing this vast, vital new infrastructure. It's not fucking rocket science, just pretty simple plumbing, carpentry, and electrical skills. ANYBODY could do it. And the wages would FAR outstrip what's available at wal-mart or Mickey-D's...
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